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College Radio is easily the best way. A semi-college radio station in Seattle which kicks much arse is KEXP. Go to www.kexp.org. They stream and also archive the last two weeks of shows. And the best part is they update their site with each song played, telling you the time it was played, the artist and the album....good luck in your venture...

You might try KEXP. Commercial free independent radio. The BEST radio station on earth. They stream in all the formats, including uncompressed CD quality. They are also really good at playing requests. Then there are the online playlists. Then there are the two weeks worth of archived sets.

Try it, you will like it.

ldb

Go here. Not only do they have a lot of interesting shows for various styles of music you might not be familiar with from rockabilly to reggae, they stream in three different formats, they have a playlist page that's updated in real-time, and they keep two weeks' worth of archives of all their broadcasts.

KEXP in Seattle has a great webcast, in various formats including MP3 and a great website with playlists that update constantly as the songs play plus you can get them emailed to you. www.kexp.org

We have on of the best independant music stations here in Seattle. KEXP

http://www.kexp.org/

It originated in 1972 at the University of Washington. It is now in a partnership with the Experience Music Project, aka Paul Allen.

From their site:
"KEXP regularly programs an innovative, eclectic mix of alternative rock, hip hop, electronic, roots & blues, world & reggae, jazz, and more.

The station also offers a number of specialty shows that focus on particular styles of music, along with some public affairs programming on weekend mornings."

This isn't exactly what you are looking for, but it comes close. They have free player streaming formats, Real, Windows, MP3, and an extra bonus. Uncompressed audio at 1.4MBit/sec. They were the first station in the world to do this.

They have archived live performances, archived specialty shows, and complete real-time playlists.

Here is their current variety Top10:
Oct 28 - Nov 3, 2002
Artist- Title (Record Company)
1. Sigur Ros - ( ) (MCA)
2. Pete Krebs & the Gossamer Wings - I Know It By Heart (Cavity Search)
3. Jurassic 5 - Power in Numbers (Interscope)
4. Beck - Sea Change (DGC)
5. The Streets - Original Pirate Material (Vice)
6. Badly Drawn Boy - Have You Fed the Fish? (ARTISTdirect)
7. Mr. Lif - I Phantom (Definitive Jux)
8. Voyager One - Monster Zero (Loveless)
9. Royksopp - Melody A.M. (Astralwerks)
10. Doug Martsch - Now You Know (Warner Bros)

They do not have the ability for you to directly purchase the CD or download the song. I think the businees overhead to do this just doesn't make sense for a listener supported radio station.

HoG.

or even better, give KEXP a listen. It used to be the radio of University of Washington, now it is a partnership with the Experience Music Project in Seattle. It has a VERY wide variety of music, and 95% of it is "good" in my opinion. I would bet you have only heard about 3% of the songs they play ever before.

The best thing about it though is that it is streamed in 3 or 4 different formats, plus their website has a realtime playlist so you can tell what you've heard. Oh, and did I mention no advertisments? You must listen!

KEXP

Imagine that in the 60's and 70's the 20 year olds were getting exited about the music from the 1930's or the 1940's.

I have to give a shout out to Seattle's KEXP , the University of Washington college station. KEXP (was KCMU) is an excellent college music station with a huge variety of music, but lots of indie rock and some techno/beats at night. They are 90.3 FM in Seattle, but they also stream live on the internet. They support MP3, RealAudio, and WMA. They even have an uncompressed, CD-quality (better than FM quality) audio stream.

Finally a little question for the P2P junks out there: many people claim they get to learn new kinds of music by P2P sharing. I won't say it isn't true, but how? You still need a handle to search new stuff? You just type in random keywords, or what? Just curious, because I'd like to broaden my musical horizonts a bit.

There are three things I do to find new music:

1) Type in random keywords. This may seem silly, but it can yield interesting results.

2) Search for a genre. You would be surprised at the amount of music that people catagorize/name by genre. Pick a genre that you don't know very well (IDM, dub, afrobeat) and search for it. You will get a seemingly random selection of music. Download these, listen to them and if you like them, search for the artist and/or stuff in the id3 tag. You will find more of their stuff, plus usually stuff they did with their friends.

3) Listen to KEXP. KEXP is possibly the best radio station in the world. They stream cd quality over the web. They are a public station (I'm a member) from Seattle. Check their time schedule (it's Pacific America time) and check out DJ Riz. This guy is the most inventive, relaxing, best DJ around.

You apparently listen to the wrong station. Try KEXP. Guaranteed to have enough vareity for all but the most pretentious listener (check out their review page for a better idea of the vareity).

Plus, they are, I believe, the only station in the world that broadcasts an uncompressed stream (true CD quality. Unfortunately the uncompressed stream requires WMP).

You apparently listen to the wrong station. Try KEXP. Guaranteed to have enough vareity for all but the most pretentious listener (check out their review page for a better idea of the vareity).

Plus, they are, I believe, the only station in the world that broadcasts an uncompressed stream (true CD quality. Unfortunately the uncompressed stream requires WMP).

I'll weep about the DMCA and those additional royalties in a second.

Commercial (and even non-commercial) radio in the United States has an extremely serious problem: It all sounds the same.

Where I live (Seattle) has a few stations which are worth listening to. The classical music station, The underground/rock music station, The folk music station, and of course The extremely annoying dance music station. (I'm not a big dance music fan, but if you want to feel like you're in a disco, even when you're not, it's a good thing).

The other 30 stations on the dial are utterly, completely interchangable. There's a station which plays all the hits from 1968-1972. Over and over. Just like every other big city in the US. Imagine that! There's three "alternative" music stations which alternate between K0RN, the Beastie Boys, and Shania Twain (there must be something alternative about her, but God knows what). Even NPR, which I wake up to every morning, does not sound a bit different if I listen in NYC, Atlanta, or San Francisco. They have All Things Considered, they have Car Talk on Saturdays, they have a mid-day call in program to talk about local politics. Who woulda thunk it?

So, if I want to listen to K0RN, or Stairway to Heaven (for the 6.02x10^23rd time!), or even listen to Fresh Air, I have this highly sophisticated device to do that. I call it a "radio". There is no imaginable reason why I would waste bandwidth and hassle to get a streaming media connection to do that.

For Internet Radio to be a success, you must first put out product which is different enough to provide value added. In this way, content is just like every other business.

j.

Go out and point your browser to KEXP and listen to real radio. If you are lucky enough to be on Internet2, you can get an uncompressed 1.4mbps feed! The best radio station in the world!